Eyebrows McGee is a young woman living in the emotional heartland of America: Peoria, that infamous bellwether constantly cited by the clueless culturati, as in, "But will it play in Peoria?" Eyebrows gives you a ground-level view of what's actually playing in Peoria.

Monday, April 10, 2006

In Which People Appear to Think I Am Not Home

I work from home, as I've mentioned before, so I'm fairly used to the rhythm of our street and, particularly once it's spring, I can hear whenever a "big truck" rolls down the road. On days when work is slow, watching FedEx come and go is substantially entertaining.

What continually amazes and annoys me, however, is how utterly careless many of these people who come and go for business reasons are. Twenty years ago, there were a lot of stay-at-home moms, so someone was home most of the day. Today, other than the folks on the street who do shiftwork (and are therefore sleeping), I'm one of the very few people home during the daytime on our block. And oh my, the bad behavior I see.

Our garbage men are great, but our lawn waste guy really just can't be bothered to pick up the lawn waste. Sometimes he skips bags, but more often, he tosses them in so that they spill everywhere, then he leaves the mess in the street. (I have called the city about this when it's particularly bad. They claim they'll send a truck to clean it up. They never do.) He's occasionally done this when I'm actively in the yard and can see him!

My mail person, as I've blogged before, really loathes the mail and can't be arsed to deliver it. She drops mail in the dirt a lot, instead of putting it in the mailbox, and can't really be bothered to pick up the stray pieces. She PITCHES packages onto people's front porches. She KNOWS I'm home all the time, and yet she'll all-but-dropkick a box onto my steps. Not that the UPS substitute driver is any better.

I watch repair and service people drive over my neighbor's lawns, or knock down trashcans and just leave. A couple of political pamphleteers apparently felt that the neighborhood flowerbeds were intended as highways for door-to-door campaigning (no, I didn't vote for your candidate! Do you know what my neighbor just spent on those new plants you trampled??). Some of the folks who open my storm door, to leave a package or a leaflet or whatever, abuse the door to an alarming degree (it's not a complicated door, either).

Most of the careless, when they see me watching them, look guilty and fix whatever they just did. But some of them look me right in the eye and go on dumping the block's lawnwaste all over the road. It blows my mind. And so many of these companies and services wonder why their customer service gets low marks. A shocking number of their employees, once free from active supervision, feel free to treat the world as their toilet. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.